Better Call Saul
75th Annual Emmys Predictions: Why This Year’s Awards May Be the Most Ridiculous Yet
On Monday night, Better Call Saul and Succession have one last chance at Emmys glory. Here's who else has a shot. 75th Annual Emmys Predictions: Why This Year’s Awards May Be the Most Ridiculous Yet Liz Shannon Miller
2022 TV Performer of the Year Rhea Seehorn Made the Final Season of Better Call Saul Unforgettable
Our 2022 Annual Report continues with the announcement of Rhea Seehorn as our TV Performer of the Year, who joined us for an interview about Better Call Saul and beyond. As the year winds down, stay tuned for more awards, lists, and articles about the best music, film, and TV of 2022. Plus, check out our Top 25 TV Shows of 2022 list here. After years of Better Call Saul, there’s one question Rhea Seehorn gets all the time, and here is the answer. “It is mostly my own hair,” she says of the famous Kim Wexler ponytail, which she sported for most of the show’s six-season run. “And then there’s one extra piece that’s put in the center that is false, that can be curled and sprayed really tight, which your natural hair wraps around, and it can stay up for a longer period of time. Because if...
Awards Are Bullshit, But It Would Still Be Nice If Better Call Saul Could Win Some
After last night’s Emmy Awards ceremony, Better Call Saul can lay claim to a remarkable achievement: 46 Emmy nominations and zero wins over the course of its six-season run. Forty. Six. Forty-six chances to recognize one of the best shows on television for its remarkable achievements, and 46 failures to do so. It feels mean to keep harping on that number, but 46 is staggering. This TVLine list showcases 25 great shows that also never won an Emmy, but most of the shows on that list only received a few token nods during their run — they weren’t playing the game as hard as Saul has done over the past six years. And yet 46 losses. It’s a lot! Upon its initial premiere, the genre-defying crime drama may have been an immediate part of the Emmys race as a spinoff of Breaking Bad, which had a much...
2022 Emmys Predictions: Our Best Guesses As to Who Will Win Big This Year
Like all awards ceremonies, every year the Emmys recognize a wide range of inspiring, hilarious, complex, and/or heartbreaking shows and performances in its nominations, and like all awards ceremonies, the actual winners sometimes feel a little disappointing, if only because the winner was the predictable choice. So, in that spirit, here is a humble effort to try to guess what and who the TV Academy will choose to recognize this Monday, when the 74th annual Emmy Awards are handed out. One word to describe the predictions below? Pragmatic is probably the most politically correct term to use. For, sometimes the Emmys can be truly exciting and innovative in their winners, but other times, the awards basically go to the same three shows. Advertisement These picks aren’t as single-minded as tha...
2022 Emmys Predictions: Our Best Guesses As to Who Will Win Big This Year
Like all awards ceremonies, every year the Emmys recognize a wide range of inspiring, hilarious, complex, and/or heartbreaking shows and performances in its nominations, and like all awards ceremonies, the actual winners sometimes feel a little disappointing, if only because the winner was the predictable choice. So, in that spirit, here is a humble effort to try to guess what and who the TV Academy will choose to recognize this Monday, when the 74th annual Emmy Awards are handed out. One word to describe the predictions below? Pragmatic is probably the most politically correct term to use. For, sometimes the Emmys can be truly exciting and innovative in their winners, but other times, the awards basically go to the same three shows. Advertisement These picks aren’t as single-minded as tha...
Better Call Saul: 7 Big Questions About the Series Finale, Answered
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the series finale of Better Call Saul, “Saul Gone.”] There’s so much to be asked, when one of television’s great achievements comes to an end. So the morning after the Better Call Saul series finale aired, co-creator Peter Gould and stars Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn very generously spoke with reporters via Zoom for a press conference that explored so many aspects of the final episode, “Saul Gone.” Below, Gould, Odenkirk, and Seehorn answer maybe not all, but at least a few of the biggest questions from the end of the season, from the choice to continue filming in black and white, what was cut from the finale, and when the idea to have Jimmy end up in prison first came up (and why that nearly caused problems with another Breaking Bad...
Better Call Saul Series Finale Review: This Is How They Get You
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the series finale of Better Call Saul, “Saul Gone.”] Sometimes you hit play on an episode of television and see the runtime and groan to yourself, “This did not need to be longer than an hour.” But with the Better Call Saul series finale, coming in at a cool 70-plus minutes (per AMC+, anyway), every extra second of goodbye was quite welcome. After Gene Takovic (Bob Odenkirk)’s unsuccessful attempt to flee the law, as summoned by that nice old lady Marion (Carol Burnett), the identity of Gene is shed forever (following one last diligent phone call to Krista at Cinnabon). Instead, Saul Goodman suits up (eventually literally), using his formidable weaseling abilities to weasel out of “life plus 190 years” for the many, many crimes he com...
Better Call Saul Review: The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Better Call Saul, Season 6 Episode 12, “Waterworks.”] As we reach the finish line on Better Call Saul, a theme has emerged from these final episodes: How tragic it is, and the tragedies that can result, when someone lives in fear. That at least seems to be Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn)’s takeaway from the last several years of her life, as we see how making contact with her ex-husband Jimmy/Saul/Gene (Bob Odenkirk) caused her to return to the scene of her crimes — even if she may not end up actually having to pay the price for them. Written and directed by Vince Gilligan, “Waterworks” is a masterclass in making the mundane seem both important and suspenseful. The action begins with a tour through Kim’s black-and-white state of existence — a n...
Better Call Saul Review: The Past Is Present
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Better Call Saul, Season 6 Episode 11, “Breaking Bad.”] On April 26th, 2009, a television show called Breaking Bad aired an episode called “Better Call Saul.” Thirteen years later, a television show called Better Call Saul aired an episode called “Breaking Bad.” Here we are at a full-circle moment for one of television’s great creative achievements, and yet the significance of Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul’s long-promised return as the iconic Walter White and Jesse Pinkman manages not to overshadow the action just now revving up in Omaha, Nebraska. The elegance of this new episode’s name choice, which is split between two very different periods of time for one Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman/Gene Takovic (Bob Odenkirk), cannot be overstated, es...
Statues of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman Unveiled in Albuquerque
Next time you’re in Albuquerque, be on the lookout for statues honoring two of the city’s most notorious drug dealers. On Friday, statues of Breaking Bad characters Walter White and Jesse Pinkman were unveiled at the Albuquerque Convention Center. The bronze sculptures, created by Trevor Grove, were commissioned by Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan as a gift to the Albuquerque for serving as the home of Breaking Bad and its prequel series Better Call Saul over the last 15 years. Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, who portrayed Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, respectively, were both in attendance for Friday’s unveiling. Advertisement Related Video “I auditioned for Breaking Bad, and it completely changed my life,” Paul said. “So thank you so much, thank you to Albuquerque — my God, we were he...
In Better Call Saul’s “Nippy,” The Future Is Now: Review
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Better Call Saul, Season 6 Episode 10, “Nippy.”] In its fourth-to-last episode, “Nippy,” Better Call Saul executed its most abrupt pivot yet. From just the title, we knew something different was in store, as a totally different naming scheme was in play (Saul does switch up its approach to episode titles from season to season, but within each season they typically remain consistent). But after seeing Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) in all his sleazy glory at the end of the previous episode, “Fun and Games,” it was clear that whatever was going to come next would be a departure from the past. However, this episode, written by Alison Tatlock and directed by Michelle MacLaren, catapulted us viewers a lot further forward than we might have e...
‘Better Call Saul’s Kim Wexler and the Sexism of the Anti-Heroine
“I learned my lesson. I’m never going to write for less-than-perfect women ever again; less-than-likable [women].” That’s a quote from Breaking Bad creator and Better Call Saul co-creator Vince Gilligan way back in 2014 during that summer’s Television Critics Association press tour. He said it before the public had seen as much of a second of the then-much-anticipated prequel to his Emmy-winning drama about a high school chemistry teacher (Bryan Cranston’s Walter White) who creates the finest methamphetamine Albuquerque, New Mexico, has ever seen. Said in his trademark folksy “Aw shucks, y’all” Virginia twang, Gilligan’s comment was meant to be read as sarcasm. It was a rebuttal against a misogynistic subset of Breaking Bad fans who had decided that the true villain of that marvelous show ...
